Lois Bujold - Falling Free

Ah, hell, she’s suffering from as bad a case of Van Atta as I am, Leo realized. The insight blunted his momentum, without bleeding off internal pressure.

“—I didn’t invent the Cay Project, and if I were running it I’d do it differently, but I have to play the hand I’m dealt, Mr. Graf. Blast—” she controlled herself, almost visibly wrenching the conversation back on its original track. “I’ve got to find her soon, or I’ll have no choice but to let Van Atta start the show ass-backwards. Leo, it’s absolutely essential that Vice President Apmad get the creche tour first, before she has time to start forming any—do you have any idea at all where those kids may be?”

Leo shook his head; an inspiration turned the truthful gesture to a lie even before he’d finished it. “But will you give me a call if you find them before I do?” he pleaded, his humble tone offering truce.

Yei’s stiffness wilted a bit. “Yes, certainly.” She shrugged wryly, a silent apology, and broke off.

Leo swung back to his locker, peeled out of his work suit, donned coveralls, and hastened off to track down his inspiration before Dr. Yei duplicated it independently. He was certain she would, and shortly, too.

Silver checked the work schedule on her vid display. Bell peppers. She floated across the hydroponics bay to the seed locker, found the correct labeled drawer, and withdrew a pre-counted paper packet. She gave the packet an absent shake, and the dried seeds made a pleasing rattle.

She collected a plastic germination box, tore open the packet, and coaxed the little pale seeds into the container, where they bounced about cheerfully. To the hydration spigot next. She thrust the water tube through the rubber doughnut seal on the side of the germination box and administered a measured squirt, and gave the box an extra shake to break up the shimmering globule of liquid that formed. Shoving the germination box into its slot in the incubation rack, she set it for the optimum temperature for peppers, bell, hybrid phototropic non-gravitational axial differentiating clone 297-X-P, and sighed.

The light from the filtered windows plucked insistently at her attention, and she paused for the fourth or fifth time this shift to weave among the grow tubes and stare out at the portion of Rodeo this bay’s angle of view allowed her to see. Somewhere down there, at the bottom of that well of air, Claire and Tony were crawling now—if they had not already surrendered—or managed to make it to another shuttle—or met some horrible catastrophe… Silver’s imagination, unbidden, supplied her with a string of sample catastrophes.

She tried to crowd them out with a firm mental picture of Tony and Claire and Andy successfully sneaking onto a shuttle bound for the Transfer Station, but the picture wavered into a scenario of Claire, attempting to jump some gap to the shuttle’s hatchway (what gap? from where, for pity’s sake?) forgetting that all such tangents were bent to parabolas by the gravitational force, and missing the target. Silver thought of the peculiar ways things moved in dense gravitational fields. The scream, chopped off by the splat on the concrete below—no, surely Claire would be holding Andy—the double splat on the concrete below… Silver kneaded her forehead with the heels of her upper hands, as if she might physically press the grisly vision back out of her brain. Claire had seen the same vids of life downside, surely she’d remember.

The hiss of the airseal doors twitched Silver back to present reality. Better look busy—what was she supposed to be doing next? Oh, yes, cleaning used grow tubes, in preparation for their placement day after tomorrow in the new bay they were building to show off everybody’s skills to the Ops VP. Damn the Ops VP. But for her, there’d be a chance Tony and Claire might go un-missed for two shifts, even three. Now…

Her heart shrank, as she saw who had entered the hydroponics bay. Now, indeed.

Ordinarily, Silver would have been glad to see Leo. He seemed a big, clean man—no, not large, but solid somehow, full of a prosaic calmness that spilled over in the very scent of him, reminiscent of downsider things Silver had chanced to handle, wood and leather and certain dried herbs. In the light of his slow smile, ghastly scenarios thinned to mist. She might yet be glad to talk to Leo…

He was not smiling now. “Silver…? You in here?”

For a wild moment Silver considered trying to hide among the grow tubes, but the foliage rustled as she turned, giving away her position. She peeked over the leaves. “Uh… hi, Leo.”

“Have you seen Tony or Claire lately?” Trust Leo to be direct. Call me Leo, he’d told her the first time she’d “Mr. Grafd” him. It’s shorter. He drifted over to the grow tubes; they regarded each other across a barrier of bush beans.

“I haven’t seen anybody but my supervisor all shift,” said Silver, momentarily relieved to be able to give a perfectly honest answer.

“When did you last see either one of them?”

“Oh—last shift, I guess.” Silver tossed her head airily.

“Where?”

“Uh… around.” She giggled vacuously. Mr. Van Atta might have flung up his hands in disgust at this point, and abandoned any attempt to wring sense from so empty a head as hers.

Leo frowned at her thoughtfully. “You know, one of the charms of you kids is the literal precision with which you answer any question.”

The comment hung in air expectantly, as Leo did. The picture of Tony, Claire, and Andy scooting across the shuttle loading bay flashed in Silver’s mind with hallucinatory clarity. She groped in memory for their prior meeting, where the final plans had been laid, to offer up as a half-truth. “We had the mid-shift meal together last shift at Nutrition Station Seven.”

Leo’s lips quirked. “I see.” He tilted his head, studying her as if she were some puzzle, such as two metallurgically incompatible surfaces he had to figure out how to join.

“You know, I just heard about Claire’s new, ah, reproduction assignment. I’d wondered what was bothering Tony the last few weeks. He was pretty broken up about it, eh? Pretty… distraught.”

“They’d had plans,” Silver began, caught herself, shrugged casually. “I don’t know. I’d be glad to get any reproduction assignment. There’s no pleasing some people.”

Leo’s face grew stern. “Silver—just how distraught were they? Kids often mistake a temporary problem for the end of the world, they have no sense of the fullness of time. Makes ‘em excitable. Think they might have been upset enough to do something… desperate?”

“Desperate?” Silver smiled rather desperately herself.

“Like a suicide pact or something?”

“Oh, no!” said Silver, shocked. “Oh, they’d never do anything like that.”

Did relief flash for a moment in Leo’s brown eyes? No, his face puckered in intensified concern.

“That’s just what I’m afraid they might have done. Tony didn’t show up for his work shift, and that’s unheard of; Andy’s gone too. They can’t be found. If they felt so desperate—trapped—what could be easier than slipping out an airlock? A flash of cold, a moment’s pain, and then—escape forever.” His single pair of hands clasped earnestly. “And it’s all my fault. I should have been more perceptive—said something…” He paused, looking at her hopefully.

“Oh, no, it was nothing like that!” Silver, horrified, hastened to dissuade him. “How awful for you to think that. Look…” She glanced around the hydroponics bay, lowered her voice. “Look, I shouldn’t tell you this, but I can’t let you go around thinking—thinking those fearful things.” She had his entire attention, grave and intent. How much dare she tell him? Some suitably edited reassurance… “Tony and Claire—”